


all my heroes die all alone

by Analyse (D_Willims)



Series: it'll still be two days till we say we're sorry [13]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: All Angst No Comfort Ever, Belated birthday fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 20:10:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20936048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_Willims/pseuds/Analyse
Summary: The first birthday after Ben dies. The year everything shatters.





	all my heroes die all alone

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from "The Archer" by Taylor Swift.
> 
> Series title from "One Week" by the Bare Naked Ladies.

_One._

On the twelfth hour of the first day of October, Luther can’t convince himself to get out of bed. Can’t even convince himself to reach a hand out and turn off the alarm. He just blinks blearily at it, listens to the constant _buzz buzz buzz_ over and over and over. Eventually, he shifts just enough to hike the thick quilt up around his ears, muffling the noise. And, if he closes his eyes, he can convince himself he’s back at home. That the alarm is just his siblings making all that noise.

The record player already playing a pop song. Klaus rifling loudly through the crates of records looking for a replacement. Allison’s new shoes tapping against the wooden floors as she dances and Ben’s soft laughter when he joins because she needs a partner. Vanya softly humming along to herself. Diego’s grumbling as he pretends not to be interested. Even Five making that disapproving clicking sound of his tongue against his teeth though he’d been gone long before Luther had found the record player in a pawn shop.

When he opens his eyes, Luther is alone. Staring down the vast, endless void of space. Dark. Silent.

His alarm keeps going. _Buzz buzz buzz_. Luther wonders how long it would take to run out of power if he just lets it go. Would the whole station lose power? Or maybe just his room? Maybe he’d run out of power before this week’s drop. Freezing to death, running out of filtered air… both of those sound better than starving because the drop was already four days late.

Would anyone even know?

Ben, the plant, would know. It needs Luther in a way Ben, the brother, never really did. Somehow that’s enough. Enough to get him to turn off the alarm, to get him to sit up. Slowly, with creaking joints he pushes to his feet and ignores the way his stomach growls. The drop would arrive tomorrow. Dad said. Everything would be okay.

“Happy birthday,” he whispers to Ben, the plant, as he lifts the watering can.

_Two._

On the twelfth hour of the first day of October, Diego wakes to his head _throbbing_. He tries to open his eyes but even the dim light of the bedroom is too bright. It’s enough to know he’s back in Eudora’s apartment. Where else would he be? The doctors were stubborn about refusing to clear him for work and he can’t exactly tell Al that he has no money and no way of making money for another couple of weeks.

Groaning, he shuts his eyes tight. Pulls the blanket up over his head as he rolls to the side. That was a mistake. His stomach keeps moving for a moment. Two. And he seriously considers just puking on the floor before his stomach settles into a general queasiness.

“Let me guess, you did something stupid,” Eudora says, like she’s in an interrogation. Using that _I know you know that I know but you have to answer the question anyway_ tone she uses on criminals. On him more than once, sitting in lock up. “The doctor said you need to rest but you did something stupid, and now you’re kicking yourself.”

“If saving lives is stupid, baby, then call me a dumbass.” Diego tries to grin, tries to open his eyes again and fails at both.

“Then we’re in agreement: you’re a dumbass.” The mattress dips under her weight and she rests a gentle hand on his chest. Pushes him back onto his back and rubs gently. It eases some of the tension in his shoulders. “Who got himself shot in the head.”

“Just a graze,” he corrects automatically.

Her hand drifts to the side and then she presses. _Hard_. Walks her fingers across bruised ribs. “Shot. In. The. Head,” she emphasizes every syllable this time, tapping her fingers to the rhythm.

Diego groans and reaches for Eudora’s hand. Tugs on her gently. He’s _exhausted_ and the effort nearly pulls him under. But she understands—they’ve been here too many times. And she curls up next to him, perpendicular and at odds but there. Her cheek rests against his chest and her knees are pulled up somewhere near his armpit.

“I love you,” she says softly. The half joking sing-song to her voice is gone.

“I know,” he whispers back. He wraps his arm around her as best he can, knees and all. Holds as tight as possible.

“I can’t keep doing this.” She’s said it a thousand times since he’d gotten shot, maybe before that and his memory was just bad. “It hurts too much.”

“I know.” Diego manages to open his eyes, at least partially. His gaze meets Eudora’s gaze, soft and sad. He knows because he’s _always_ known. This was doomed from the start. his upbringing had made sure of that. Made him _unfit_ for this kind of thing. Too independent. The way he pushes everyone away until they start pushing back, until there’s more space between them than anything else. And in some ways it hadn’t mattered because he never thought he’d live that long. Burn out fast.

And, fuck. This is the thing he wanted to make work the most. He’s won’t, though. They both know that.

“I love you, Eudora,” he says.

“I know,” she says back. Reaches up and cradles his cheek. It’s not enough for her to stay. Maybe not now, but someday soon she’ll be gone.

_Three._

On the twelfth hour of the first day of October, Allison steps over the threshold of a townhome in Paris. Dad’s, not that she thought he ever stayed there. She’s certain only Vanya has ever _actually_ lived in the house. Allison refuses to dwell on the last time she was here, on Vanya pale and shaky and clinging to her fingers. They’d left that behind them. And this is the safest place in the city right now.

Safety is an illusion.

The air in the house is oppressive and Allison doesn’t get far before she can’t breathe again. She presses a hand to her stomach, sucks in a deep breath. Then, she ducks into the front powder room.

Three minutes later, she’s staring at a little pink plus sign on a plastic stick. Proof positive of her own personal nightmare. Allison’s not even sure she _can_ love someone, not the way a mother is supposed to, because no one has ever actually loved her.

That hurt runs too deep.

She feels a little queasy and disjointed, somehow out of her own body. Like she’s going to fall apart completely as she walks down the hall. But her voice is calm and even when she calls her assistant to cancel the appointment with her lawyer. And she holds herself upright until she hangs up the blue phone in the kitchen. Then, her knees turn to jelly and she sinks down to the ground, presses herself against the wall and cries.

Allison isn’t sure how long she stays there before the caretaker of this house comes by. Nanette. A woman who looks like Grace and sounds like Grace, built to comfort Vanya years ago. Vanya found no comfort, Allison knows. Because she’s _not_ Grace, off just enough that it’s deeply unsettling when she strokes a hand through Allison’s hair.

“Oh, my sweet,” Nanette says, voice like a soft bell. She pushes a lock of Allison’s hair behind her ear before curling her cool hand around Allison’s cheek. Wipes away tears.

And it’s not her mother, Allison knows that, but Nanette is so much like Grace and Allison has never wanted her mother more than she has in that moment. Wants someone to hold her and lie to her and tell her it’s okay, that she can do this. That just because she’s never had love doesn’t mean she’s incapable of it.

“You’re alright, my sweet.” Nanette lets Allison throw herself into her lap. Strokes a hand down her spine, soft and comforting. “Everything’s alright. I’m right here.”

Nothing’s alright.

_Four._

On the twelfth hour of the first day of October, Klaus checks himself out of Sunnyview Psychiatric. The therapist thinks he should stay. Another voluntary hold. Klaus actually laughed inappropriately loud at that suggestion. Like staying longer would make anything make any more sense. No one _believes_ him.

Schizophrenia.

That’s what they kept saying. It’s accepted fact that he sees ghosts but he didn’t see_ these_ ghosts. Couldn’t have. Diego’s alive; he practically carried Klaus into the facility. Luther’s alive; look at this writeup in the paper.

There are no pictures and the writeup proves nothing.

If no one’s going to help Klaus, he’s just going to have to help himself. So he collects his things—the newspaper with its lies and the month old tabloid with its rumors, some cash Allison sent him. The bills are crisp, new, and Klaus finds a perverse pleasure in crumpling them up, shoving them in his pocket. It’s for food, rent at a little efficiency Diego found. Klaus knows that. His siblings are just trying to help.

They understand less than the doctors.

Klaus spends the cash on booze and pills. Self-medicates. Buries the ghosts under a haze. If Luther’s spirit is still out there, like he knows it is deep in his bones, Klaus is disinviting him from the party. Him and Ben who abandoned him in that place and just _everyone_.

He’s over it.

He swallows a tablet of who knows what dry. Grabs his bottle of rye and holds it up in a mock toast, before drinking it down.

_Six._

On the twelfth hour of the first day of October, Ben comes home. It’s sooner than he thought he’d get here. The whole world is open to him now that he isn’t bound to a physical body, and he has all of eternity to explore it. Coming back to the mansion was at the very bottom of that list.

He’d died on these cobblestones. Cold and alone and lulled into a restless, endless sleep by the steady patter of rain.

And Dad had erected a memorial to him. Here. In this place.

The only comfort is that it doesn’t look anything like Ben. He thinks maybe Dad had it commissioned off those stupid comic books. Where they remained unchanged. Perpetually thirteen and obedient and scared to cross their father.

It’s like the last eleven years never even happened. Tattoos and fights and the pain in his stomach and cooking classes and all the nights he cried himself to sleep. All of it. Everything that made Ben _Ben_ just erased with one statue, a handful of comic books. And it doesn’t even look like him.

Maybe it’s for the best. All those pieces of his life were just for him. Nobody else.

Except there’s a smashed bottle of vodka at the base—Klaus’s, obviously—and a knife stuck in the garden wall—Diego’s, even more obviously. A pack of Allison’s Lucky Strikes taped up under the pedestal. The notable, painful absence of Luther and Vanya and Five. Too respectful to act or just not there. Never there.

Ben sucks in a breath that isn’t real and he doesn’t need. But he swears that he can feel the cool, damp air in his lungs. He shoves his hands in his pockets and curls his shoulders forward. Like he still needs to protect himself.

And there’s a lot of regrets dying young, wandering the earth forever because Dad couldn’t be assed to give him a final resting place. The biggest, though, is that he never shared those pieces with his siblings when he had the chance.

He wonders if they even know how terrible the statue is.

“Well, fuck,” he sighs, exhales air that was never really there. The lone tree in the courtyard rustles.

_Seven._

On the twelfth hour of the first day of October, Vanya buys herself a single cupcake. She puts a single candle in it and sets it on her counter. Puts her hands on the edge of the counter, one top of the other, and bends over to rest her chin on them. Watches the tiny flame dance, flicker. Almost go out because it’s all alone and it’s not strong enough.

Her eyes water and she blinks, looks away. At the pile of mail on her counter. A newspaper with a writeup of Luther’s space mission, a tabloid claiming that Allison is pregnant. The latest royalty check.

She doesn’t _need_ it. The royalties have already paid her rent for a year or more. And she’s still working, at the philharmonic, giving lessons. It’s not a lot—nothing compared to what she grew up with it—but it’s enough for her.

A single cupcake, a lone flame that isn’t strong enough to chase out the darkness.

If she never wrote the book, Vanya knows, her siblings would be here now. This was _their_ day. The day when they were supposed to drop all their shit, just for a bit. Because no one else would ever understand. Not really.

Ben’s dead and Vanya’s here. She tells herself that she only did what she was brought up to do, what Dad would have done. Sell her greatest pains, her siblings’ trauma, for a profit.

No pain, no gain.

In a wild, impulsive moment, Vanya snatches up the royalty check, unopened. She holds it over the little flame that cannot stand on its own and lets the edge catch fire. Lets it burn all the way up to her fingertips.

Until she has to throw the burning paper in the sink.

Ash falls like a blanket of snow over her counter, the cupcake, the mail.


End file.
